{"id":5382,"date":"2009-09-09T13:37:31","date_gmt":"2009-09-09T18:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5382"},"modified":"2009-09-09T14:07:17","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T19:07:17","slug":"too-much-freedom-for-friedman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5382","title":{"rendered":"Too Much Freedom for Friedman"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world’s oldest sophomore, Tom Friedman, has discovered<\/a> the wondrous advantages of one-party autocracy over our current system of government. No, I am not exaggerating.<\/p>\n

Watching both the health care and climate\/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you’re new to Friedman’s writing, or perhaps still nostalgically influenced by his presumably serious position as a columnist for the New York Times, you might think this is merely an attention grabbing opening lede which will be smoothly integrated into an otherwise sensible opinion piece as he develops his thoughts on this. You possibly also still believe in the Easter Bunny.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The stifling lack of freedom? The soul-killing monotony of a centrally planned existence at odds with the natural independent inclinations of the human individual? Bad haircuts? Friedman doesn’t say. Because he’s not talking about those<\/em> kinds of autocratic regimes. He’s discovered the good<\/em> kind.<\/p>\n

But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Isn’t that cool? One party can just… impose stuff! What could go wrong?! I mean… we’re talking about critically important policies here. Why let such antiquated concepts as dissent or checks and balances get in the way when we need to “move a society forward in the 21st century”? Whatever that means. It sure sounds modern and new though!<\/p>\n

It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China\u2019s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not sure anything is allowed to be an “accident” in an autocratic one-party regime, but let’s leave that aside. Isn’t it kind of leaping ahead to take China’s “committ[ment]to overtaking us” as a fait accompli? I’m pretty sure China isn’t terribly alone in their forecast of rising demand for energy. I’m also pretty sure it’s widely understood that the West’s fetish to move away from fossil fuels represents a great opportunity for alternative sources like wind and solar. The big difference here, it would seem, is that China’s one-party autocrats get to command the resources of an entire nation toward that (or any other) goal.<\/p>\n

Gosh, that sounds impressive. How could a free market democratic nation possibly compete with that? Apparently, per Friedman (who perhaps ought to read more from a different Friedman<\/a>), it probably can’t.<\/p>\n

Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy\/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Umm… starting to go off the rails a bit here. If we’re in a one-party democracy – and with the Democratic Party in charge of the presidency and holding both houses of Congress with large majorities we presumably are – where is this whine about “only” the Democrats coming from?<\/p>\n

With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying \u201cno.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Damn freedom of speech, and the dirty free choice that goes along with it! That “free speech” stuff was only meant to cover student demonstrations in the 60’s, anyway. Surely it has no serious purpose in opposing grand transformative waves of change that would make us more like China! Autocracy now!<\/p>\n

Anyway, Friedman goes on with one of the more confusing and self-contradictory analyses of current partisan politics you’ll ever read. In summary, he asserts that partisan disagreement – which is entirely the fault of Republicans – is preventing effective government action on energy and health care. Also immigration.<\/p>\n

And so, apparently, we must bow to the superior government of modern China which is destined to overtake us because all their<\/em> Republicans are safely locked away in labor camps working hard at manufacturing electric cars while ours<\/em> run around scandalously disagreeing<\/em> with their enlightened betters.<\/p>\n

Sounds like this one-party autocracy stuff is the wave of the future. We’d probably better adapt ourselves to it lest we get left behind. Where have I heard this kind of thing before? Oh yeah. That was in the New York Times<\/a> too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world’s oldest sophomore, Tom Friedman, has discovered the wondrous advantages of one-party autocracy over our current system of government. No, I am not exaggerating. Watching both the health care and climate\/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,61,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-global-warmingcoolingchange","category-liberal-tyranny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}